Tech playing bigger role in police work

More training needed as big data and video surveillance help solve crimes

With the nature of police work in China changing as technology plays a bigger role in criminal investigations, legal professionals are calling for more training for forensic and high-tech talent.

Ji Chunwei, a criminal lawyer from Guangdong province who used to be a policeman, said the number of labs or centers for studying and applying technology in criminal investigations has risen over the past five years.

"Chinese police have realized the importance of applying technology in cracking criminal cases and have also shown their willingness to brush up on the latest technologies," said Ji, who was a police officer from 2000 to 2014.

He said most public security bureaus, including the one he worked for, used to be more focused on clues such as fingerprints and footprints during investigations. However, "now they have begun using more big data and video surveillance as electronic evidence."

"In the past decade, what police mainly did was collect people's biological information," Ji said.

"Now that collection is working effectively."

For example, a man surnamed Ma who is suspected of raping and killing a college student 28 years ago was caught by police in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in February, thanks to the application of DNA comparison.

Another two high-profile arrests in recent years are also good examples of how technology could lead to breakthroughs in criminal investigations, according to Ji.

On Nov 28, after two decades on the run, Lao Rongzhi, a female fugitive suspected of being involved in the killings of seven people, was arrested by police in Xiamen, Fujian province.

Beijing News reported she was found as a result of big data analysis and admitted her true identity when police showed her the results of a DNA test.

She is now facing trial in her home province of Jiangxi.

Further, four years ago, Gao Chengyong, a serial killer dubbed China's "Jack the Ripper", was arrested after a DNA comparison.

Gao, who murdered 10 women and an 8-year-old girl in northern China between May 1988 and February 2002, was not regarded as a suspect until police collected a blood sample from one of his relatives in another criminal investigation in 2015.

Gao, 53, was caught in Baiyin, Gansu province, on Aug 26, 2016, and executed there in January last year.

"DNA comparison has helped police increase the probability of catching fugitives because the technology is accurate and highly sensitive," Ji said.

Big data, video surveillance, artificial intelligence and psychological tests are also being used more frequently in dealing with new types of crimes, said Liao Ming, an associate law professor at Beijing Normal University.

"Taking advantage of technologies to offend is common nowadays, such as those using the internet and telecommunications to defraud others," he said.

"If police cannot become more capable of applying technology in criminal investigations, they will find it difficult to fight high-tech offenses."

Hubei's provincial Public Security Bureau said it handled 271 homicide cases last year, all of which had been solved. DNA comparison and big data were used to solve 39 of them.

"Public security authorities at the county and city levels in Hubei have established DNA labs or big data databases one after another, improving the integration of criminal case information and helping us accurately identify missing people or dead bodies," the bureau said in a statement.

Liao said, "As it shortens investigators' time in cracking criminal cases, the application of technology as a major way to obtain physical evidence can also reduce the use of coercive measures in interrogations to prevent wrongful arrests and to correct miscarriages of justice in investigations."

But the technologies should not be abused because that could lead to a lack of trust in identification results.

"The regulated application of technologies will better ensure accuracy and efficiency in criminal investigation," Liao said.

Ji also urged public security bureaus across the country to better regulate the DNA comparison process.

"If the procedures cannot be standardized, the results will not be accurate or become more easily tainted," he said.

"Some police officers from grassroots-level public security bureaus didn't wear medical gloves, masks or caps when collecting DNA at crime scenes, which negatively influenced comparison results."

Liao and Ji suggested the country intensify efforts to train forensic and high-tech talent.

Ji said criminal investigation has always been a major in police colleges.

"But what we urgently need is interdisciplinary talent, or those who are not only familiar with investigation, but also good at the internet, computing or biology," Ji said.

Police colleges should work with other universities to train such talent, and public security departments should offer technological training for police officers, he said.